The USSI steering committee work focuses on these key areas.
Provost Feser charged the initial USSI Steering Committee (USSI SC) on January 19, 2018. After a period of “researching and benchmarking effective student success measures, collecting an inventory of existing university efforts to foster student success, determining campus needs that will enable and advance student success, and understanding the technical and structural requirements needed to create a sustainable infrastructure” (Executive Summary, USSI-SC June 2018), the USSI-SC delivered its initial report in June 2018, which prioritized five areas of institutional focus: Curricular Excellence, Experiential Learning, Faculty-Student Engagement, Financial Aid and Scholarships, and the Transition Experience.
For the 2018-2019 Academic Year, The USSI-SC focused on an array issues related to the Transition Experience at OSU. Their May 2019 report, yielded the following recommendations:
- Pilot an Early Alert system for students at high risk of academic distress
- Pilot a university-wide Transition-to-OSU course
- Continue to convene the USSI Summit
- Continue the Faculty-Student Mentor Program Pilot for a 2nd year
- Study optimizing Scholarship Allocation for Student Success
- Develop and Institutionalize Retention & Completion Micro-grants
- Study Financial Literacy as a Tool to Improve Student Success
- Staff the Assessment of Student Success
- Identify future USSI-SC Leadership and committee members